I have since overcome my initial apprehensions regarding this project due to childhood trauma incurred at a summer school programming camp.

This is one reflection I have to reflect on as my first post seemed closeminded.

The mind is like a parachute…it only works when it is open.


“Any thoughts given your recent learning adventure experience?”
Yes, I have plenty of thoughts.  As Aura wrote (after I cut, pasted, enlarged and read her text in Microsoft Word):

“I am always trying to find relationships between our reading and learning adventures and my everyday work in corporate learning”

I too enjoy finding connections between what we are learning and how it applies to our everyday lives.  I believe that what we learn in our various courses will eventually “click” and empower us as well-rounded educators, entrepreneurs, and human beings.  Furthermore, I appreciate the related discussions we’ve had about grades and feedback.  I think I have gained more understanding regarding our learning objectives and rather than developing a trust-gap I feel like the camaraderie has increased as well as the freedom to think and respond without the pressures of conventional boundaries.

Having said that, this was my least favorite Learning Adventure.  Does that matter?  No.  I think my emotion is secondary to our results.  Computer programming–despite what one may believe about hard or soft mastery–requires ample amounts of logic.  Engineering in general seems to demand calculations that are testable, right or wrong, proven or unproven, true or false.  In a world full of variables, I appreciate a couple of constants.  In this way, LOGO and its turtle icons (though there exists a world of other uses) is a valuable learning tool.  (insert “DUH” here.)

Though I am not a programmer nor an engineer, some of my best friends are.   One of these friends is an electrical engineer who currently designs “superfast” silicon integrated circuits for a tech company.

Somewhere around 1985 when I was 9 years old my friend and I were enrolled in a summer school class at Cal Lutheran University.  As pristine beach days marched past in glorious succession we withered away under fluorescent lights and were forced to learn LOGO turtles as well as BASIC computer languages.  I can’t remember the computers we used…probably a Commodore 64 and/or Apple II.

The moral of the story is that I seriously disliked LOGO then and not much has changed since.  When I saw the focus of this Learning Adventure I was horrified.  “NOT AGAIN!!!” was the first thought that went through my head.

As stated, my emotional reaction is irrelevant to the results.  I understand the value of LOGO as it relates to learning and learners.  As Papert stated in Mindstorms, “The use of the microworld provides a model of a learning theory in which active learning consists of exploration by the learner of a microworld sufficiently bounded and transparent for constructive exploration and yet sufficiently rich for significant discovery.”  (Papert, 1980, p. 208)   So, LOGO and Microworlds EX is somewhat reductionist in it’s approach to education and yet the possibilities it presents to the learner are immense.  Logically, it makes perfect sense.

As an aside, I find it ironic that the word LOGO is a derivative of the Greek, meaning “word.”  The whole turtle revolution (read “constructivist instructional design icon”) hinges upon a visual experience that helps children “concretize” abstract ideas such as programming and geometry without emphasis on instructive techniques. This is fantastic…albeit not for me.

Nonetheless, this Learning Adventure “connected” to my learning theorist for EDU 633…guess who?  No, not Piaget.  Vygotsky is the correct answer.  With his Mind In Society, Vygotsky (1896-1934) also laid forward thinking concepts regarding tools and symbols in child development.  Vygotsky, like Papert was well ahead of his time.

Finally, I felt that this Learning Adventure, EDU 633 and our related readings connected to my recent understandings of distributed cognition which we discussed at length last semester. So to this end, Learning Adventure #5 was an enriching experience for many different reasons.

Now, please allow me to vent at length about my emotional aversion to this project.  Programming, especially at the LOGO level is a rigid endeavor full of various hierarchies of order and structure.  If you input a list of code correctly the computer  will execute your commands without argument or resistance.  Ideally, the turtle will make a nice design wherein a learner might discover valuable correlations to tangential subjects such as ecology (diSessa, 2000, p.47)   Personally, I’d rather just go outside to play and eliminate the middle man.

Indeed, LOGO establishes finite boundaries and allows young explorers to “test hypotheses, and discover facts that are true about that world.”  I’ve always loved doing the same thing.  I just loved doing it under natural light instead of fluorescent ones.

CONCLUSION:

Flashback to 1986:  Perhaps this “predictability” factor is why I longed for the outdoors while my best friend scurried back home to keep programming on his brand new MAC 512K.  I really do not know what makes one person fall in love with programming and another detest it.  That is the conundrum that I thought about most during this endeavor.

For posterity, I called up my friend to see if he remembered our summer school LOGO adventures back in 1986.  He replied, “Oh yeah, the turtles!  I loved that class.  I got more into BASIC but I think that was one of the things that got me into programming in the first place.”

My reaction was completely the opposite.  As such, this Learning Adventure spurred my quest for understanding.  Why do two children, similar in virtually every other respect find have such dichotomous reaction to certain tasks?  As educators and/or changemakers, how should we acknowledge, respect, and foster such differences among individual learners?  Admittedly, I am left with more questions than answers.

To this day, some of my best friends are programmers.  I feel a kindred spirit with those who have a zealous passion for learning, creating, exploring and evolving our collective knowledge about the world.  LOGO is a spark that may or may not ignite the fire of an undiscovered talent.  As Papert asserts in Computers as Material..., “None of this should be taken to mean that the computer and LOGO are the be-all and end-all of this type of exploration.”  I wonder how many brilliant programmers will find their initial passion through these turtles.  I also wonder if it is a fair to compare the number of gifted musicians who discover their talents through games such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band.  Somehow I believe that’s comparing apples and oranges.  I guess that’s the nice thing about learning.  We are all capable of producing different fruits.  And as my grandfather likes to say, “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”  (HA!  I made you read all this just for that last joke.)

POST SCRIPT:

I can’t help but feel there is some element shared by die hard programmers that is extremely “punk rock.”  Think about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak staying up for four days straight breadboarding Breakout for ATARI back in 1976.  That’s pretty radical.  Ultimately, I believe that no matter how mainstream you try to make programming, only a select few are going to be the rock star engineers and designers of the next generation.

In addition to the tutorial, here are some websites that I felt particularly helpful for this adventure.  I am extremely indebted to Fabi, MT, Jorge and others who assisted me with the actual programming.  Now let’s all go outside and play.

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1ch10/turtle.html
http://mia.openworldlearning.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroWorlds (Gary Stager is listed with Papert on this page.)